I'm afraid your chances of getting rid of them are very slim. Nature does not like a vacuum and before too long you'll have more. I suppose they must have a place in the scheme of things although I've always found them annoying and unattractive. But then maybe they feel the same way about us.

Ingrid

Put up a scarecrow? :o)
{{gwi:312016}}

What about a scarecrow??lol. Just don't let those kaw, kaws
turn into haw haws out of your frustration.

ingrid_vc is right. All you'll do by killing those particular crows is create a population gap which will very rapidly be filled by more crows.

The cardinals live successfully with it, so should the rest of us. Crows also eat mice, right?

(Oh, btw, crows absolutely freak out in the presence of owls, so I suspect owls visit their nests at night now & then, too.)

I don't blame you. I would like to go after the grasshoppers with a shotgun. If they get much bigger, I will be able to use a pellet gun.

LOVE the scarecrow picture, BTW! :-) Made me laugh.

Or... buy a really big kitty
{{gwi:312018}}
I'll bet he is a good bird catcher :o)

When I worked at Disneyland, there were so many crows. Every day a little before dusk, they would all flock in the air and make a big noise. My friend called it the spirit of Walt. Thereafter, I always thought it was spooky.

Shoot them. Get a good pellet gun with a good site. It would break my heart to see them take off with those babies. jmo

nature vacuum?!? LOL

Blast the suckers!!!

{{gwi:312020}}

Just don't get caught, because any bird except non-natives are protected and it is illegal to shoot them without a "pest" permit such as one that would be issued to orchard owners.

I bought a pellet gun to kill the rabbits in my suburban yard. It works. But I must be careful to aim at the ground and avoid ricochets. And I must be discreet -- I don't want anyone calling the cops.

If you bought a gun, would you be aiming high? Is there the risk you could miss and hust someone or damage something? Are you willing to take the time to learn how to shoot it? Use it well?

Hey, I really CAN shoot grasshoppers with a BB gun! :-) Got more of them by walking through with a fly swatter, tho.

The good Doctor has good advice - BB's ricochet off the patio and last thing I want to do is break a window while going postal on grasshoppers.

Just to clarify...I'm talking about an AIR gun! My father in law uses one and he says it will kill a bird. I'm not planning on shooting a real gun outside.

Under the right circumstances an air gun can kill a bird, but there's a very big difference between taking out a pigeon or two and taking out a crow. As was already pointed out, crows are native so frankly what you want to do is illegal, but beyond that, crows are far more intelligent than most birds and even if you don't get them the first time, you'll probably never get a second chance because they'll figure out how to avoid the new threat.

The crow family is loaded with intelligent birds, most especially ravens, but also American crows.

It is illegal and I agree you will not likely kill a crow with an air rifle.
You might end up with a dive bomber.
They're smart, tough and hold a grudge I swear.
They're the bullies of the bird world.
Try a blast of water.

HAHA. Reminds me of the back unit of my parents duplex. My sister moved back there. My late Mother thought it was so quiet back there. First of all there are wild parrots that are noisy. Little beep-beep chickadee type birds. Possums, squirrels and pidgeons, and crows of course. My parents have two daushunds. One of the dogs injured a crow one time. Dad stashed the bird behind the trash cans and fed it raw meat till it flew away a few days later. While the bird was down it's buddies were really angry and cawed at my sister every time she went outside. She said it creeped her out to see a dozen crows staring and cawing at her..they also dive bombed her. One afternoon a pidgeon flew into the apartment..it was like it was saying "it's too scary out there". My sister said it is anything but quiet back there.

Just recently I moved into a lovely home by the woods. I was startled to see the crows washing their road kill in the bird bath. I read up and yes it is common..they rob bird nests. I felt so bad when I went outside to clean the birdbath and found little bird parts floating in the water. I know how you feel. But nature has her ways.

Oh- now you've got me started on my crow rant! I've often walked at a nearby neighborhood park, very popular with families. Finding pizza boxes or other food leftovers on the ground, I would pick them up and dispose of them in one of the numerous trash cans, grumbling about messy people. Only to soon discover crows in my wake, pulling the items right back out again! Luckily, the topless trash cans could be slid under the edges of nearby picnic tables to thwart the crows from scavanging.
I actually became a little more tolerant of them after I read the rat population would be higher if not for competing crows.
Then, a big fat one discovered my backyard birdbath,began visiting daily and leaving behind unappetizing remains of his/her meal fouling the water. That did it. No more sympathy. I broke the cycle of visits by stopping the water randomly. Lately they haven't been around, thankfully.

Crows don't bother me nearly as much as the grackles. We have a few crows in the neighborhood, but all I ever see them do is try and get into open garbage (not mine BTW).

As for the grackles, they dispose of native song birds eggs, kill other birds' babies, and just cause ruckus. A pellet gun works GREAT on 'em - I've become a sharp-shooter because they've given me so many opportunities to blast 'em away.

---
Wendy

I discourage crows by planting nesting sites like evergreens and thorny roses that make it much harder for crows to rob nests. Keeping the birdbaths under evergreens has so far kept the crows from using it as a washing station.

As I live near woods, I suspect the more powerful deterrent is the red-tailed hawks and owls. Until the hawks settled in about 8 years ago I would often see crows in the yard...no more.

{{gwi:312022}}

A wood elf would be handy.

Raven is feeding her babies at this time of year, too. It's long, hard work. Nature is opportunistic. I say leave Raven alone and let the food chain be the food chain.

Good dog!

As I live near woods, I suspect the more powerful deterrent is the red-tailed hawks and owls.

I suspect you're right there. Just as mockingbirds go berserk when a crow is nearby crows go just as berserk when a red-tailed hawk or a big owl is nearby.

Years ago I heard a local mention that if you want to keep magpies away, you hang a dead one in your yard. I thought it hilarious, but didn't believe it.

However, my husband had heard the same story regarding crows. We had been bothered (the noise can be incredible, with magpies being even louder than crows) and since we are cyclist, we see road kill every once and awhile. So my husband came home with a dead crow, hung it up in a tree and we have not had a crow in years.

We did the same thing for magpies. I saw one early this spring, but only for a few hours and none since.

So we are now believers.

haha sounds ancient! they have been doing that to various criminals and unfortunate parties for eaons as a warning to others.

Most birds wouldn't make that kind of connection, but I can believe crows (ie. "Corvids", including magpies) would, and once the visiting pattern was disrupted the next generation of birds would be out of the habit of going to your yard.

What about one of the fake halloween crows with black feathers glued on to hang up? Lasts longer and less smell maybe. The fake wasp nests I hung are working great to keep away the real wasps.

We had a bad problem downtown, but the city did something about it. Before that, I had 3 hanging around, always kind of spooked me out, but I wanted to get along with them, started feeding them along with the carnivore woodpeckers, dry cat food and meat scraps cut up and no bones to drop on a roof. That went on awhile, watched one eat a piece of apple one day, interesting birds.

But then a sick one showed up on my front porch at the water dish I set out, and I found 2 dead in the gutter a half block down, laid there for 2 or more weeks weeks, ick. We have a problem with West Nile, they had already done their sampling, confirmed its presence in the area, so wouldn't come pick them up. I thought they were a health hazard and if it had been in front of my house, would have disposed of them.

So West Nile took its toll on them, now we have a fair amount of owls, that may help keep them away. Haven't been bothered by them for a couple years now, same with the larger brown woodpeckers, large flock of them. So nature has its ways, but you don't want West Nile in your area if you don't have it already. People in the two-state area have died from it (mosquitoes the carrier), usually elderly or with compromised immune systems.

West Nile virus is primarily a bird disease, but it will also infect humans. The vast majority of humans who get it think they have a mild cold, or have no symptoms at all, but people with compromised immune systems (elderly included) do sometimes die from it.

After reading all this guess there is nothing we can do about the red wing black birds. They make a horrible noise and chase away the cardinals, blue birds, woodpeckers and such from the feeders. We have five acres and wonderful if I could put a certain type of feed, they would like at a different location on the property. I know this would encourage more of them but don't know what else to do.

We have a bunch of crows down by the river and they are as loud as bad neighbors. (Bad neighbors tend to move on, crows like their riverfront.)
The birds we call black birds, usually with a cuss word as adjective are Starlings which are not native, are intimidating when their flocks of several hundred take off, and are partly responsible for this part of the country having a Histoplasmosis problem.
Thanks to the well meaning classicists who imported Starlings so that the new world could have all the critters mentioned in Shakespeare's plays.

Here is a link that might be useful: A picture reminiscent of the movie

When you go to our airport, you can hear birds, but see none - the same thing goes for downtown. They pipe in bird sounds. The sound is pleasant to us, but I think it is of a bird that would be considered dangerous by other birds.

I wonder what it would take to put up a speaker that would play bird sounds.

Sammy

Blackbirds are definitely smart. They are cunning and tricky things. They rip baby plants up and have been throwing dirt all over my plant borders looking for wormms in the new compost i put down. They also rip up mulch or straw that i place over plant beds. They have really started to get on my nerves lately. I have been grabbing handfulls of bark chunks and throwing them at them but they keep coming back. Now i'm using small stones but they are quick. I was thinking of a catapulp. A cat would do the trick but they present another sort of problem. Poisen is another. Generally i would not kill anything, not spiders either but these birds are infuriating.

Anyone who thinks you can't kill a crow with an air rifle (meaning: that it's not physically possible) has no clue about air rifles. Many air rifles fire .22- or .25-caliber rounds and can propel them at speeds that exceed the speed of sound (1,080 fps). Many air rifles can potentially kill a HUMAN because the pellet can penetrate the skull or body cavity (lungs, heart). I don't mean to be gross or morbid, but air rifles are NOT toys. A crow doesn't even rise to the level of challenge for many of them.